LAFAYETTE, IN — Wea Township is home to 34,000 people and encompasses much of Lafayette’s southern suburbs. But when its board in October approved a raise that nearly doubled trustee Jim Slaven’s salary, few people seem to have noticed.
Considering how little the public pays attention to Indiana’s 1,005 townships, that might not be surprising.
Although city and county politics face regular scrutiny, most townships often operate unnoticed to their own residents. Public board meetings go largely unattended, township races struggle to attract voters, and many people don’t even know what a township does, Fairfield Township Trustee Monica Casanova said.
Without the pressures of angry attendees to public meetings and protests, townships like Wea can become opaque “black boxes” of spending outside of the public view.
“It is an office that is not well known,” Casanova said recently, “and so there is an immense power of discretion and latitude given to trustees.”
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